Daytona 500 rating takes a drop for first prime-time show

That number, which does not include the two-hour delay after Juan Pablo Montoya’s car crashed into a safety truck/track-drying engine, was down 8 percent from last year (8.7), when the race — as it had been every year in its 53 previous runnings — was held on Sunday afternoon.

Still, the rating delivered a prime-time victory for Fox for viewers ages 18-49, despite going up against ABC’s “The Bachelor,” CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two And A Half Men” and NBC’s “The Voice.”

It was the Fox’s most-watched Monday night since Game 5 of the 2010 World Series.

3 Responses

How is the rating measured, over the course of the broadcast or at a specific point in time? I also wonder how many of the casual or curious observers left when Danica Patrick was involved in the Lap 2 wreck and off the track for over 60 laps.

I’m sure that number is a bit skewed because of that last hour. I would love to get the hour-by-hour splits for the number. I think if it had ended at 10:30-11, and not the 1AM it did, the number would have looked much higher, as I am sure most non-diehard racing fans went to sleep before 1AM as they needed to be up for work the next day. I think it could be a good experiment for them, doing their early races on Monday prime time (it would need to be pre-ASG for BB, as they will lose them to the playoff chase in BB and then in September to MNF)